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TWO SPIRIT
Native American LGBTQ Info and Resources
LGBTQ Native Americans: Making the World
a Better Place
Two-Spirit Joy (and Pain) Examined in
New Doc 'Being Thunder'
Wikipedia: Two Spirit
Video: What Does Two Spirit Mean?
"Two
Spirit" is an aboriginal phrase (a direct translation of
the Ojibwe term Niizh manidoowag) that refers to both
masculine and feminine spirits simultaneously living in
the same body. It is a term used by the native,
indigenous, or aboriginal lesbian, gay, bisexual,
transgender, and queer community.
Within the various native or aboriginal populations,
including American Indians (Cherokee, Navajo, Mohican,
Iroquois, Mohawk, Creek, Sioux, Apache, Chippewa,
Shawnee, Chickasaw, Seminole), Canadian Indian (First
Nations), Alaskan Native (Eskimo, Inuit, Aleut), and others, LGBTQ individuals
often have difficulty overcoming the cultural taboos
against homosexual behavior.
Native
people whose gender identify differs are often subject
to shaming, a form of social censorship within the
tribal community. Shame is rendered for inappropriate
social behavior, particularly any personal expression
for flamboyant dress, mannerisms and especially
effeminate behavior among males. Likewise, shame is
given any female whose overt masculine behaviors
demonstrate her toughness. In short, tolerance in a
contemporary Indian community over the years has evolved
to allow no alternatives for a male or female Indian
identity. Doing so would be considered to bring shame
not just on the individual but also negative attention
to their family.
As a result of tribal community pressures, young people
who have a different sexual orientation often grow up in
a closeted existence or actual isolation. This imposed
isolation is self-destructive and limits individuals
from living to their fullest potential. In a school
environment, many of these young people are subjected to
bullying and harassment from their classmates. In this
atmosphere, support is generally unavailable and creates
an unsafe environment within the school. Nonetheless,
there are exceptional gay students who somehow endure
and who are accepted as equals by their peers. However,
the majority of gay students exhibit behaviors such as
skipping school, which affects their academic
performance, or simply will become a run away from both
home and school.
For Native
LGBTQ people who seek life in a city for anonymity, the
experience can be far more negative than staying within
their home community. Like most natives reared in a
tribal community, Native LGBTQ people retain pride in
their identity, where they are from and who are their
relatives. Living in a city can unfortunately give a
sense of alienation that is both physical and emotional.
Native LGBTQ individuals often grieve their separation
from family and community when they are unaccepted in a
city because of their lifestyle as well as being a
Native. This experience results in a double
discrimination for Native LGBTQ people instead of the
desired anonymity.
Documentary Film: Two
Spirits
Dancing to Eagle Spirit Society
Saving Two Spirit and Indigenous LGBTQ
Youth
Mending the Rainbow: Working with Two Spirit Communities
Video: What Does Two Spirit Mean?
Gay Native American Couple Break Barriers with Pow Wow
Dance
Androgyne: Two Spirit
Tradition
Indigenous Tribes of the
United States
LGBTQ History
Includes Indigenous Two-Spirit People
TED Talk: Two Spirit and Gender Fluidity
Here's What It Means To Be Two-Spirit
According To Native People
Who Are the Two Spirits?
Native Two Spirits
Two-Spirit
People
"Two-Spirit" is an umbrella term sometimes used by
Native American and Canadian First Nation communities to
refer to those who fulfill one of many mixed gender
roles. Two-Spirit people are generally defined as LGBTQ
and gender-variant members of the Native American/First
Nation communities. Many contemporary LGBTQ North
American indigenous or aboriginal people use the term
“Two-Spirit” to maintain cultural continuity with their
traditions.
In many
cultures, some individuals possessed and manifested a
balance of both feminine and masculine energies, making
them inherently sacred people. Third gender roles
historically embodied by Two-Spirit people include
performing work and wearing clothes associated with both
men and women. The presence of two-spirits was a
fundamental institution among most tribal peoples. Male
and female two-spirits have been documented in over 150
tribes, in every region of North America, serving
specific duties, including men fulfilling women’s roles,
women fulfilling men’s roles, and importantly,
Two-Spirit individuals contributing as spiritual
leaders.
According
to the Navajo, for example, there are four genders:
--Man
--Woman
--Masculine Female-Bodied Nádleeh
--Feminine Male-Bodied Nádleeh
It is documented in academic literature that many
American Indian cultures honored and respected
alternative sexual lifestyles and gender roles, which
the Two-Spirit movement is attempting to recover. A
complex sex/gender system was found in every region of
the continent, among every type of Native culture, from
the small bands of hunters in Alaska to the populous,
hierarchical city-states in Florida. Lesbian, gay,
bisexual, transgender, and queer orientations were
honored and often coincided with healing and shamanic
practices.
Here's What It Means To Be Two-Spirit
According To Native People
Sean Snyder and
Adrian Matthias Stevens
Meet the Native American couple redefining cultural
norms… Nevada-based dancers Adrian Matthias
Stevens and Sean Synder are blazing a trail in
traditional Native American culture: The out couple are
now regularly performing a “sweetheart’s dance” on the
same pow-wow circuit that they first met on years ago.
Stevens, who is of Northern Ute, Shoshone-Bannock and
San Carlos Apache heritage; and Snyder, who is of
Southern Ute and Navajo heritage, are a Two-Spirit
couple that have been together for seven years. Within
North American Indigenous communities, Two-Spirit refers
to people who possess both masculine and feminine
spirits, but it can also be used to represent LGBTQ
Indigenous people more broadly. “It’s not biological,
it’s spiritual, and it ties back to what I was taught
growing up,” Stevens told Vogue in 2020. “My aunties
recognized me as a Two-Spirit individual way before I
even recognized it.”
When Stevens and Snyder first met, they were both
dancers on Utah’s powwow circuit. Pow wows are social
gatherings held by many different Native American and
First Nations communities. Contemporary pow wows involve
dancing competitions, singing, socializing, and other
elements. The sweetheart competition, where couples show
off partnered routines in hopes of winning a prize, is a
frequent element of many pow wows, with cash prizes that
can top $10,000. However, it took Stevens and Synder
years to perform a couple routine in the sweetheart
competition. That category was exclusively performed by
male and female dancers until 2018, when they became the
first Two-Spirit pair to do so, after being disqualified
from a dance the year prior. “Because our styles
are so different, we had to find a way to dance
together,” Snyder told Vogue. “And for us being two men,
it was surprisingly difficult. You don’t grow up going
to dances and learning to dance with another same-sex
partner. We had to learn how to lead and how to take
direction.”
Since
then, their routines and matching regalia (each
embellished with their own handmade beadwork) have
brought them widespread attention. In 2019, a short
documentary telling their story, Sweetheart Dancers, was
shown at the PBS Short Film Festival. "To be here
as a 2Spirit person means being proud of my identity and
how I walk this earth between the masculine and
feminine," Sean said. "It means dancing with
Pride, using my movements to take up space. Using my art
and designs to show the world we are thriving. Using my
voice for our youth and our elders. My peers and the
Two-Spirit community deserve more from our own Sovereign
Nations, to be protected and to have the equal rights as
our Cis/Hetero relations."
Sweetheart Dancers
Native American LGBTQ Info and Resources
Here's What It Means To
Be Two-Spirit According To Native
People
Wikipedia: Two Spirit
Video: What Does Two Spirit Mean?
Queer Indigenous
Books
Buffalo Is the New Buffalo by Chelsea Vowel
A Snake Falls to Earth by Darcie Little Badger
A Minor Chorus by Billy-Ray Belcourt
Rabbit Chase by Elizabeth LaPensée and KC Oster
Ask the Brindled by No’u Revilla
Màgòdiz by Gabe Calderón
Making Love with the Land by Joshua Whitehead
The Summer of Bitter and Sweet by Jen Ferguson
Trudie Jackson
Trudie Jackson made history as the first out trans and
two-spirit Native woman to run for president of Navajo
Nation, a Native American territory occupying portions
of Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico.
Currently residing in Albuquerque, Jackson founded the
Southwest American Indian Rainbow Gathering, which is
currently in its eighth year and addresses health
disparities of American Indians that identify as
two-spirit. A current board member for the Transgender
Resource Center of New Mexico, she’s received awards for
her work from the National Native American AIDS
Prevention Center and It Gets Better.
Additionally, Jackson was selected to be part of the
first cohort with the 2018 Tribal Researchers Cancer
Control Fellowship Program under the Portland Area
Indian Health Board, where she will explore public
health research on Native trans women, hormone therapy,
and liver function.
Though Jackson lost the 2018 election, her message still
resonates. “My identity as a candidate gave hope and
inspiration to many young and older Navajo 2SLGBTQ
third, fourth, and fifth gender individuals to embrace
their identity, but most importantly is to exercise
their right to vote in the Navajo Nation primary and
general presidential election to share their voice,
opinion, and ask questions for the betterment of the
Navajo Nation.”
The activist continues to blaze trails, completing a
doctorate degree, making her one of only a few Native
American two-spirit trans women to have done world that
disadvantages them.
Jackson says she acknowledges, the many Indigenous
two-spirit trailblazers who have “paved the way for my
existence in a colonial society, in which we continue to
fight for our existence within the boundaries of our
Sovereign Tribal Nations.”
[Source:
Advocate]
Indigenous Tribes of the
United States
Native
American Names for Two-Spirit People
--Badé / Boté (Crow people)
--Warhameh (Cocopa people)
--Joya (Chumash people)
--Kwiraxame (Maricopa people)
--Ihamana (Zuni people)
--Winkte (Lakota people)
--Nadleeh (Navajo people)
Before the
late twentieth century, the term “berdache” was widely
used by anthropologists as a generic term to indicate
two-spirit individuals. However, this term has become
increasingly outdated and considered offensive. The term
“Two-Spirit” gained widespread popularity in 1990 during
the third annual intertribal Native American/First
Nations gay and lesbian conference in Winnipeg.
"Two-spirited" or "two-spirit" usually indicates a
person whose body simultaneously manifests both a
masculine and a feminine spirit. These individuals were
sometimes viewed in certain tribes as having two spirits
occupying one body. Their dress is usually a mixture of
traditionally male and traditionally female articles.
They have distinct gender and social roles in their
tribes. The term can also be used more abstractly, to
indicate presence of two contrasting human spirits (such
as Warrior and Clan Mother) or two contrasting animal
spirits (which, depending on the culture, might be Eagle
and Coyote).
Here's What It Means To Be Two-Spirit
According To Native People
Dancing to Eagle Spirit Society
Mending the Rainbow: Working with Two Spirit Communities
Video: What Does Two Spirit Mean?
Androgyne: Two Spirit Tradition
TED Talk: Two Spirit and Gender Fluidity
Who Are the Two Spirits?
Two-Spirit
is a native tradition that researchers have identified
in some of the earliest discoveries of native artifacts.
Much evidence indicates that native people, prior to
colonization, believed in the existence of cross-gender
roles, the male-female, the female-male, what we now
call the Two-Spirited person. Two-spirits might have
relationships with people of either sex. Female-bodied
two-spirits usually had sexual relations or marriages
with only females.
In Native
American/First Nation culture, before the Europeans came
to the Americas, "two-spirit" referred to an ancient
teaching. Native elders tell of people who were gifted
among all beings because they carried two spirits, that
of male and female. It is told that women engaged in
tribal warfare and married other women, as there were
men who married other men. These individuals were looked
upon as a third and fourth gender in many cases and in
almost all cultures they were honored and revered.
Wikipedia: Two Spirit
Charlie Ballard Video: Being Gay and Native American
Two Spirited Tradition
Frameline Video: Two Spirit People
Two-spirit
people were often the visionaries, the healers, the
medicine people, the nannies of orphans, the care
givers. They were respected as fundamental components of
their ancient culture and societies. In some tribes,
male-bodied two-spirits held specific active roles
which, varying by tribe, may include: healers or
medicine persons, conveyors of oral traditions and
songs, foretellers of the future, conferrers of lucky
names on children or adults, nurses during war
expeditions, potters, matchmakers, makers of feather
regalia for dances, and special role players in the Sun
Dance.
Although two-spirits were both respected and feared in
many tribes, the two-spirit was not beyond reproach or
even being killed for bad deeds. They frequently became
medicine persons and were likely to be suspected of
witchcraft in cases of failed harvest or of death. They
were, like any other medicine person, frequently killed
over these suspicions. At the same time, traditional
Two-Spirit customs and ceremonies have, in many cases,
been replaced with Anglo-Christian ideology and
homophobia.
Other Indigenous Two-Spirit People
There are transgender and non-binary people among
native, indigenous and aboriginal populations throughout the
world. These "creative spirits" typically occupy
separate, sometimes isolated, communities.
Australia
- Yimpininni (Sistergirls, Brotherboys)
India -
Hijra,
Khanith
Mexico -
Muxe
Southwestern US - Dineh
Hawaii - Māhū
Polynesia
- Fa'afafine
Indonesia - Calabai,
Calalai
Balkans -
Sworn Virgins
LGBTQ People in Aboriginal Cultures
Queer Indigenous History
Black Rainbow
Sistagals of Australia's Tiwi Islands
Third Gender Movement
Yimpininni: Largest Native Trans Community
Sistergirls and Brotherboys
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